If you know me you know two very important things about me:
1. I am currently dealing with a family member who is sick.
2. I am a
Personal Kanban champion.
Why am I telling you these two things? That brings me to this post. I finished the end of 2009 in a foggy funk. Seriously down and depressed. After Christmas I decided I needed to do some cleaning both internally in my head and externally in my favorite place in the house, my haven, my home office. Since I am telling you interesting facts about me that you might not know, here's another, I crave order. I know I have closet CDO, see I even have to have OCD rearranged into alphabetical order. I need order, I need everything in it's place. I am not joking when I tell you that EVERYTHING in my cabinets are lined up perfectly and all labels facing front. I can't stand or won't tolerate any kind of messiness in my home. My home is my sanctuary and I need perfection here. That being said, you can just imagine how I felt every time I walked into my office and was greeted by THIS:
You can view all my photos here.
That is just one part of my desk. It kills me to even look at it today. My office had become a reflection of my life. A complete dumping ground, a complete mess. Just like my emotional state I had closed the door on my office and refused to deal with it. Hey I didn't have to resume work in my home office again until after Jan 1. One more reason not to deal with it.
I had slid through the holiday in a complete funk. I was participating in holiday activities but was just a shell of myself. Then a week after Christmas had passed I walked by my office, looked at that desk and decided enough was enough. I was going to expand my office space. I was going to buy new bookshelves, ones that would give me enough room for all my work materials. I was going to re-organize what had become a huge mess, lost in the shuffle of what had become my life.
What happened next completely changed me in more ways than one.
While cleaning out all the bookshelves purging items that were no longer relevant to my work I stumbled upon a treasure of memories. That's right memories. Photographs of a time gone by, pictures & artwork drawn by my daughter many, many years ago, a few scattered cards from friends and my husband from way back when we were first married. What did these items do to me other than bring back a flood of fantastic memories? These items reminded me of what was important in my life, they reminded me of lessons learned, lessons shared, lessons still to be learned.
My office was a mess, my life had become a mess, but taking that day and finding those memories, helped me to find myself again. I can't control what goes on around me in my life all the time however, I can control how I deal with what goes on.
After renovating my office, enlarging the space, reorganizing everything from top to bottom, I felt a renewed spirit. It wasn't just about my office, it was about me. Those memories helped me find myself again. I realized that I can't lose sight of that ever again. I can't fall into the downward spiral of funk that I was in EVER again. But, how do I do that? How do I prevent that? Can I even pretend to try to do that? Absolutely. I went to my go-to application for organization-
Personal Kanban. As you know I have blogged before about the benefits I have gained from applying Personal Kanban to my life, if you have missed them you can read them
here and
here. I am a self proclaimed Personal Kanban Champion. Simply put, it has changed my life both personally and professionally. I thought about those life lessons and how I wanted to work on them, and practice them diligently this year. I wondered how I could make that my main mission this year, then it dawned on me. Make it my WIP (Work In Progess) this year. I created a WIP- Personal Kanban board for myself with Life's Lessons that I needed to practice this year. I wanted to be reminded daily of these life's lessons that I considered to be important to me this year. I created the board, took a photograph of it and set it as my laptop wallpaper.
Click to enlarge. You can also view all my photos here.
That way everyday when I turn on my laptop the first thing I see are the life lessons I need to apply to myself this year. Immediately upon applying this to my laptop my whole mood changed. I was immediately transformed. I had begun to feel for the first time in months, optimistic, uplifted, excited for what the future will bring. I might not always like what my life dishes out to me but now I have another tool to help me deal with what it gives me. One thing I know, I will always be a
Work In Progress, and I like that!
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